Weird Mongolian dinosaur wielded 'big, sharp and nasty' claws
Fossils unearthed during construction of a water pipeline in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia have revealed one of the oddest members of a rather strange group of dinosaurs, a creature whose two-fingered hands sport a pair of menacing curved claws. Duonychus was a medium-sized member of a group of awkward-looking dinosaurs called therizinosaurs, which were known for having a rotund torso, long neck, small head, bipedal stance, feathers on the body and massive claws on the hands. "These were big, sharp and nasty claws," said paleontologist and study co-author Darla Zelenitsky of the University of Calgary in Canada. "That's incredibly rare," Kobayashi said of the keratin fossilization, "and it gives us an extraordinary window into how these dinosaurs actually used their hands in life.
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